The Jesus Clone

by Raymond Leonard

The Turin Shroud - Fact or Fake? How many times has this question been asked over the centuries? As a Member of The Turin Shroud Society, Raymond Leonard has answered this question by blending fact with fiction to stunning effect in his acclaimed novel, The Jesus Clone. - ViewpointWhen reporter Lynn Fitzgerald runs a computer search to find the six greatest scientists of the twentieth century, an intriguing and unexpected name turns up. Joshua Benson was a rising star in the new science of genetics and cloning, until his sudden defection to Russia. With the help of ‘Billy the Hack’, and the CIA archives, Benson is traced to Turin prior to his defection. Lynn discovers that during his mysterious stay in the city, the cathedral was robbed of two items. The first was a gem encrusted crucifix, while the second was a fragment of cloth from the Turin Shroud – believed by worshipers to be the burial shroud of Christ – a fragment bearing the blood of the man it once draped. And now in Moscow, nearly 30 years after the cathedral’s desecration, there are strange reports of a man with compelling powers of persuasion, leading the people to revolution.

277 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Raymond Leonard: Scientist, Novelist, Poet or Latter-day Prophet

Raymond Leonard was born during an air-raid on the centre of Manchester, in which his parent’s home was destroyed. As a youth, in the City slums, he devised many ways of helping the family budget, including a Newspaper boy, and running a Fruit and Vegetable stall on bombed land. Having left school at 14, he went on to win a State Scholarship and then a Ph.D. After a Senior Industrial Career he joined the Academic Staff at Manchester University. Here he founded his own department of Total Technology, which helped win the Queen’s Anniversary Prize, presented at Buckingham Palace. During his academic career he supervised numerous doctoral students, wrote over 200 research papers in science and engineering, and a textbook on Applied Technology. He also co-authored the book, How to Avoid The British Disease, which the then Prime minster, Margret Thatcher, referred to as being her Little Bible.

Lifelong passions for Professor Leonard have been Science, Religion and The Future. These interests inspired a series of futuristic novels. When the Daily Express was reviewing The Nostradamus Inheritance it carried the headline, Scientist Predicts The Day The World Will End. This caused widespread concern in the UK. The headline also helped the book hit the best seller lists, and even find translation into Japanese and Hindi. This public concern for the future was heightened when Professor Leonard’s own predictions in The Nostradamus Inheritance started to be chillingly fulfilled. Other predictions in subsequent novels, such as the immediate collapse of the Soviet Union, as forecast in Legacy of The Shroud, now titled The Jesus Clone, added to his growing reputation as a Latter-day Prophet. This prophetic image resulted in Professor Leonard giving the Cardinal Newman Lecture at Oxford University. Here the title was Reconciling Prophesy With Freewill. It was noted that the Old Library was filled to capacity for Professor Leonard’s presentation.

All Raymond Leonard’s five novels, suitably reviewed by the author, are now available on Amazon/Kindle. There is also an Amazon edition of the complete collection of his poems (published or otherwise). A selection of these poems is freely available for reading on his website, www.rayondleonard.com. The poems, entitled, Pearls Along The Path, bridge the wrongly perceived divide between Science and Faith. They also give a vision of the world that awaits ourselves and our fragile Earth.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plot: A plucky girl reporter (© The '80s) at a mid-market New York newspaper, who is also the editor's daughter, is yearning to move out of the Women's Features department and into hard news. Given the chance to do a piece on the top scientists of the 20th century, she learns about a once-famous CalTech geneticist who is said to have made advances in cloning in the 1950s but then defected to the USSR, where he seemingly vanished. On the way to Moscow, he happened to spend a day or two in Turin, Italy, for reasons best known to fans of Jesus-clone fiction. Whatever became of him and his wife, who was desperate to have a baby, anyway?

Style: Spelling -- standard English. Grammar -- ditto. A standout in the genre! My one complaint is that Leonard tends to italicize words that don't particularly need it. More Tracy-and-Hepburn-style banter than is standard in theological thrillers.

Source of DNA: So many mad scientists have taken pieces of the shroud in order to meddle in affairs Man was not meant to understand that the thing's probably the size of a washcloth now. In fairness, this was published in 1988, which makes it one of the early entries, if not the first.

Villain: The head of the KGB, whose involvement in this affair may not be the result of random chance.

Romantic subplot guaranteed to make religious Christians queasy? You bet.

Crucial scene set at UN headquarters? No, despite touches of international intrigue.

Least believable element: A daily paper having the money to fly a reporter (boss' kid or not) and a researcher to California and Moscow. Sorry, that's beyond sci-fi and pushing it for fantasy.

Quote: "As they walked towards the exit, the whole building went quiet. Ivan didn't seem to notice the silence, but Lynn wondered if it signified some kind of primitive worship. Perhaps the chimps did know Ivan was there, and were showing reverence."

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plot: A plucky girl reporter (© The '80s) at a mid-market New York newspaper, who is also the editor's daughter, is yearning to move out of the Women's Features department and into hard news. Given the chance to do a piece on the top scientists of the 20th century, she learns about a once-famous CalTech geneticist who is said to have made advances in cloning in the 1950s but then defected to the USSR, where he seemingly vanished. On the way to Moscow, he happened to spend a day or two in Turin, Italy, for reasons best known to fans of Jesus-clone fiction. Whatever became of him and his wife, who was desperate to have a baby, anyway?

Style: Spelling -- standard English. Grammar -- ditto. A standout in the genre! My one complaint is that Leonard tends to italicize words that don't particularly need it. More Tracy-and-Hepburn-style banter than is standard in theological thrillers.

Source of DNA: So many mad scientists have taken pieces of the shroud in order to meddle in affairs Man was not meant to understand that the thing's probably the size of a washcloth now. In fairness, this was published in 1988, which makes it one of the early entries, if not the first.

Villain: The head of the KGB, whose involvement in this affair may not be the result of random chance.

Romantic subplot guaranteed to make religious Christians queasy? You bet.

Crucial scene set at UN headquarters? No, despite touches of international intrigue.

Least believable element:A daily paper having the money to fly a reporter (boss' kid or not) and a researcher to California and Moscow. Sorry, that's beyond sci-fi and pushing it for fantasy.

Quote: "As they walked towards the exit, the whole building went quiet. Ivan didn't seem to notice the silence, but Lynn wondered if it signified some kind of primitive worship. Perhaps the chimps did know Ivan was there, and were showing reverence."

[W J Innes · Rating 1 out of 5]

Probably the second worst book I have ever read.